The birds are not real and they are watching him. Perched on the balcony railing they turn their heads and stare despite the tinted glass. They are small but unhurried, lacking the skittishness of the songbirds they imitate. Their carnival colours are at odds with the grey London sky behind them.
He stares back, willing them to take flight. It is a battle of patience, of resolve; one he knows he cannot win. He hopes instead for a little luck. Why is it not rationed like everything else? Perhaps it is. Perhaps he has already used his share. No doubt it is in short supply.
He watches the birds ruffle and preen their feathers. Their movements are convincing even though he knows them to be unnecessary. They stretch their wings, testing the air currents in preparation for flight. Then they settle. They wait. They have nowhere more pressing to be. The frustration winds something inside him, twisting it more tightly. He fears that it may break.
He concedes and moves away, through the kitchen and the archway to the recessed room beyond. Tucked behind the alcove wall the glass-topped freezer hums, one cover panel slid permanently beneath the other. He checks the temperature display then runs his hands over the insulation lining of the inner compartment; a modification he has added himself. He feels for flaws that might let the cold in or the heat signature out.
The child in its depths smiles in her sleep and kicks her legs, trying to throw off the blankets. Her small fists beat at some imaginary foe. He smiles in response. You get that from your mother, he thinks. He wants to pick her up and hold her, to shield her from dangers illusory and real. He can do neither. Soon, perhaps. He holds the idea in check, wary of promises he cannot keep. Instead he takes a breath and counts his blessings. At least she is sleeping. When she cries the fear builds in the apartment like the pressure of a burgeoning storm, threatening to wash away their brittle existence. They need soundproofing. Baby clothes. Extra food. They need these things quickly and they need them quietly. The neighbours will not betray them but their luck will only hold for so long.
The birds hop along the rusted metal, tracking his body heat as he crosses from the kitchen to the lounge. They follow when he moves and stop when he turns to look at them, as if trying to engage him in some cheerful children’s game. They tilt their heads on one side in unison and he thinks they look puzzled, almost mocking.
‘Do you think you can hide in there, Arnaud? With your tinted glass and your low-tech lifestyle? Do you think we cannot see what you are up to? You know us better than that.’
He ignores them: the birds; his thoughts. He turns his back to the window and focuses on simply being still. From stillness he progresses through the breathing exercises, seeking calm in the repetition. The process clears his mind until only the beat of his heart remains. He listens to it, works to quicken its rhythm then slows it again. Satisfied, he flows into the movements of the Tai-chi.
If he caught one of them, somewhere well away from the apartment, he could take it apart, strip the tech from it. The sensors and processors would fetch a good price at Fairground, no questions asked. Or he could barter them for extra insulation for the freezer and a little more peace of mind. There is a market for the feathers if you know the right people and he thinks he is starting to. The beak and claws could be sold as trophies to one of the more chaotic denominations, with a little more risk. All told, a useful haul. Only the musculature would go to waste. No-one works with the living fibres. No-one really knows how.
It is a fool’s errand and he knows it. If he were caught the fine would exceed the money he could hope to raise and the chances of being caught are as close to certain as makes no difference. The birds have a dozen ways to determine identity. Facial recognition. Voice pattern. Pheromones. Any scrap of skin or blood which they would happily liberate from him if unsighted and threatened. Heart rhythm and heat signature and a host of other secondary traits that combined could sift his identity from the general population. He would need to find a way around all of these. Even then, assuming he could mask himself from sight and sound, he would need to leave behind his filters to step off the grid completely. And if he walked that path, he would want more than a songbird to show for it.
This is the first half of the first chapter of what I hope will be a science fiction novella. I plan to publish a chapter a week but as my process of writing and re-writing is slow, bordering on glacial, that's much more of a challenge than it sounds. We'll see.
The novella is set in London, in a world that is vaguely post-apocalyptic and fully post-decentralisation. A world in which a man may choose the laws he wishes to live by, with one exception. There are also angels, of a sort. But we'll come to all of that. Otherwise you won't need to read it, will you?
This is a new work, original and direct to Steemit.
Thanks for reading!
The second part of the first chapter can now be found here
---> Chapter01 Part02